Robert Rankin - East of Ealing

I AM LATEINOS, I AM ROMIITH.

The Latin, the formula, words reduced to their base components, stripped of their flesh, reduced to the charred black dust of their skeletons; to the equations which were the music of the spheres, the grand high opera of all existence. Omally slumped forward on to his knees. “I see it,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes starting from his head. “Now I understand.”

“Then bully for you, John. Come on let’s get out, someone will see us.” Pooley fanned at his nose and rubbed at his shirt-sleeves.

“No, no. Don’t you understand what it’s doing? Why it’s here?”

“No. Nor why I should be.”

“It is what the Professor told us.” Omally struck his fist to his temple. “Numerology; the power lies in the numbers themselves. Can’t you see it? This whole madhouse is the product of mathematics. Mankind did not invent mathematics nor discover it. No the science of mathematics was given to him that he might misuse it to his ruin. That he might eventually create all this.” Omally spread out his arms to encompass the world they now inhabited. “Don’t you understand?”

Jim shook his head. “Pissed again,” said he. “And this time as Pope.”

Omally continued, his voice rising in pitch as the revelation struck him like a thunderbolt. “The machine has now perfected the art. It has mastered the science, it can break anything down to its mathematical equivalent. Once it has the formula it can then rebuild, recreate everything. An entire brand new world built from the ashes of the old, encompassing everything.”

“But all it does is churn out the same old stuff over and over again.”

Omally clambered to his feet and turned upon him. “Yes, you damn fool, because there is one number it can never find. It found the number of a man, but there is one more number, one more equation which never can be found.”

“Go on then, have your spasm.”

“The soul. That’s what the old man was trying to tell us. Don’t you see it, Jim?”

“I see that,” said Pooley, pointing away over John’s shoulder. “But I don’t believe it.”

Omally turned to catch sight of a gaunt angular figure clad in the shredded remnants of a tweed suit, who was stealing purposefully towards them.

“The Saints be praised.”

“Holmes,” gasped Pooley. “But how…? It cannot be.”

“You can’t keep a good man down.”

Sherlock Holmes gestured towards them. “Come,” he mouthed.

Jim put his hand to Omally’s arm. “What if he starts clearing his throat?”

Omally shrugged helplessly. “Come on, Jim,” he said, trundling Marchant towards the skulking detective.

Holmes drew them into the shadows. There in the half-light his face seemed drawn and haggard, although a fierce vitality shone in his eyes. “Then only we three remain.” It was a statement rather than a question. Omally nodded slowly. “And do you know what must be done?”

“We do not.”

“Then I shall tell you, but quickly, for we have little or no time. We are going to poison it,” said Sherlock Holmes. “We are going to feed it with death.” The cold determination of his words and the authority with which he spoke to them seemed absolute.

“Poison it?” said Jim. “But how?”

Holmes drew out a sheaf of papers from his pocket, even in the semi-darkness the Professor’s distinctive Gothic penmanship was instantly recognizable. “Feed it with death. The Professor formulated the final equation. He knew that he might not survive so he entrusted a copy to me. What he began so must we finish.”

“Hear, hear.”

“Computers are the products of diseased minds, but they will react only to precise stimuli. Feed them gibberish and you will not confuse them. But feed them with correctly-coded instructions and they will react and function accordingly, in their own unholy madness. Professor Slocombe formulated the final programme. It will direct the machine to reverse its functions, leading ultimately to its own destruction. This programme will override any failsafe mechanism the machine has. I must, however, gain access to one of the terminals.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Jim enquired as he slyly drained the last drop from his hip-flask. “They all seem a little busy at present.”

Sherlock Holmes drew out his gun. “This is a Forty-four Magnum, biggest…”

“Yes, we are well aware of that. It might, however, attract a little too much attention.”

“My own thoughts entirely. I was wondering, therefore, if you two gentlemen might be prevailed upon to create some kind of diversion.”

“Oh yes?” said Pope John. “What, such as drawing the demonic horde down about our ears whilst you punch figures into a computer terminal?”

Holmes nodded grimly. “Something like that. I will require at least six clear minutes. I know I am asking a lot.”

“You are asking everything.”

Holmes had no answer to make.

John stared hard into the face of Jim Pooley.

The other shrugged. “What the heck?” said he.

“What indeed?” Omally climbed on to his bike. “Room for one more up front.”

Jim smiled broadly and tore off his metallic balaclava. “Then we won’t be needing these any more.”

“No,” said John, removing his own. “I think not.” Raising his hand in a farewell salute he applied his foot to the pedal. “Up the Rebels.”

“God for Harry,” chorused Pooley, as the two launched forward across the floor, bound for destiny upon the worn wheels of Marchant the Wonder Bike.

A strange vibration swept up the mainframe of the great computer. The figures moving upon its face stiffened, frozen solid. Diamond-tipped lights began to flicker and flash, forming into sequences, columns, and star-shapes, and pyramids, veering and changing, pulsing faster and faster. A low purr of ominous humming rose in pitch, growing to a siren-screaming crescendo, as the machine’s defence system suddenly registered the double image coursing across the floor of its very sanctum sanctorum. A ripple of startled movement spread out from the base, as the terminal operators took in the horror. Their heads rose to face the mainframe, their mouths opened, and the curiously mechanical coughing sounds issued forth, swelling to an atavistic howl.

“Do you think they’ve tumbled us, John?” Pooley clapped his hands across his ears and Omally sank his head between his shoulders as the two zig-zagged on between the sea of terminals and their shrieking, howling operators. The robots were rising to their feet, stretching out their arms towards their master, their heads thrown back, their mouths opening and closing. They stormed from their seats to pursue the intruders.

At the back of the hall a stealthy figure in shredded tweed slipped into a vacant chair and flexed his long slim fingers.

“Get away there!” Pooley levelled his travelling hobnail towards a shrieking figure looming before them. He caught it a mighty blow to the chest and toppled it down across the face of a terminal, tearing it from its mounts amidst a tangle of sparking wires and scrambled mechanisms.

“Nice one, Jim.”

“Hard to port, John.”

Omally spun a hasty, wheel-screeching left turn, dodging a cluster of straining hands which clawed towards them. They dived off down another line of abandoned terminals, the robots now scrambling over them, faces contorted in hatred, anxious to be done with the last of their sworn enemy. Small black boxes were being drawn into the light, emitting sinister crackles of blue fire. The chase was on in earnest. And there were an awful lot of the blighters, with just two men to the bike.

The figures on the high gantries now ran to and fro in a fever of manic industry. They worked with inhuman energy, tending and caring to their dark master. The lights about them streamed up the dead black face, throbbing in “V” formations, travelling down again to burst into pentacles and cuneiform. They became a triple-six logo a hundred feet high which reformed into the head of a horned goat, the eyes ringed in blood-red laser fire. Blackpool illuminations it was not.